Vermont Golden Dome Book Award Nominees: 2021-2022 Master List

ZJ's friends Ollie, Darry and Daniel help him cope when his father, a beloved professional football player, suffers severe headaches and memory loss that spell the end of his career.

"After their mama dies, Jack and Birdie find themselves without a place to call home. And when Mama's two brothers each try to provide one--first sweet Uncle Carl, then gruff Uncle Patrick--the results are funny, tender, and tragic. They're also somehow .. . spectacular. With voices and characters that soar off the page, J. M. M. Nuanez's debut novel depicts an unlikely family caught in a situation none of them would have chosen, and the beautiful...

The first book in a can't-put-it-down, can't-read-it-fast-enough action-thriller trilogy that's part Hatchet, part Little Shop of Horrors! The invasion begins--but not as you'd expect. It begins with rain. Rain that carries seeds. Seeds that sprout--overnight, everywhere. These new plants take over crop fields, twine up houses, burrow below streets. They bloom--and release toxic pollens. They bloom--and form venus-fly-trap-like pods that swallow animals...

Winner of the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Illustrated Books for Older Readers
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020
A New York Times Best Children's Book of 2020
Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2020
Booklist Best Books of 2020
Horn Book Fanfare 2020 Booklist
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best 2020
Jewish Journal Twenty of the Best

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"Twelve-year-old Cindy has just dipped a toe into seventh-grade drama -- with its complicated friendships, bullies, and cute boys -- when she earns an internship as a cub reporter at a local newspaper in the early 1970s. A (rare) young female reporter takes Cindy under her wing, and Cindy soon learns not only how to write a lede, but also how to respectfully question authority, how to assert herself in a world run by men, and -- as the Watergate scandal...

Immersing himself in a fantasy world of knights and chivalry, introverted Ware is sent to a summer camp designed around social interactions and begins building a castle-like private space while clashing with a fellow misfit.

Nine-year-old Betita and her parents fled Mexico after her uncle was killed by the cartels, and settled in Los Angeles seeking political asylum and safety in what her father calls Aztlan, the land of the cranes; but now they have been swept up by the government's Immigration Customs Enforcement, her father deported back to Mexico, and Betita and her mother confined in a family detention camp--Betita finds heart in her imagination and the picture poems...

"Felix Rannells and Benji Porter were never supposed to be field-trip partners. Felix is a rule follower. Benji is a rule bender. They're not friends. And they don't have anything to talk about. Until . . . They find a wallet. A wallet that belongs to tech billionaire Laura Friendly. They're totally going to return it--but not before Benji 'borrows' twenty dollars to buy hot dogs. Because twenty dollars is like a penny to a billionaire, right? But...

Acclaimed, award-winning author Linda Sue Park has placed a young half-Asian girl, Hanna, in a small town in America's heartland, in 1880. Hanna's adjustment to her new surroundings, which primarily means negotiating the townspeople's almost unanimous prejudice against Asians, is at the heart of the story.

April is looking for an escape from the sixth-grade lunch hour, which has become a social-scene nightmare, so she signs up to be a "buddy bench monitor" for the fourth graders' recess. Joey Byrd is a boy on the fringes, who wanders the playground alone, dragging his foot through the dirt. But over time, April realizes that Joey isn't just making random circles. When you look at his designs from above, a story emerges... Joey's "bird's eye" drawings...